Fleetway Publications

Growing up Christmas wasn’t Christmas without a comics hardcover Annual to read. Earlier in the year I picked up a run of Valiant Annuals from the mid to late sixties and thought it would be fun to revisit them around the holidays. Valiant was a boys adventure comic mixing historical, military, and sports stories with the occasional educational article, and as expected this Annual reflects the same content. While some of the jingoistic undertones are a little uncomfortable from today’s perspective, the few strips that also have female characters are surprisingly progressive with them having equal agency with the lead males, although it’s the men who get their name in the strip title. Highlights for me were a fascinating article about a Nuclear powered US Army camp situated under the Greenland icecap (it apparently was shut down in 1967), and a fun pulp style space adventure which included the line “You cant expect a chimp to do much in the way of running a spaceship!” - There are no credits for any of the writers or artists but the cover looks to be by the excellent Ron Emberton who also contributed a couple of painted strips inside. Overall a real nostalgia trip and a fun read.… (more)

The coloured frontispiece shows blond Roy Race nodding in another winner. What a hero. Roy's fame in the Tiger led him on to greater things, a whole annual devoted to him. This one is a mixture of stories e.g. Wanted for Wembley by Harry Clements, cartoon strips, 'The football bandit fighters', bright and colourful pictures of national colours and badges, the league club badges including Portsmouth. There are puzzle pages, a crossword. clues such as Trautmann's first name and first name of Kinsey, Birmingham City forward - I think he was Welsh and called Noel - and a simple board game occupying the inside back cover. Life was much simpler in 1958. Third Lanark played at Cathkin Park.… (more)

One of the first 2000AD Annuals to drop the 50% factual articles format for a more comic driven structure.

Cover illustration (head portraits of Judge Dredd / Rogue Trooper. Full body profile of Slaine) by Mike McMahon.
Illustrated contents page with Torquemada, by Kevin O'Neill.

Slaine - The Battle of Clontarf [Full Colour] (Pat Mills - Massimo Belardinelli)
The Burt Interview - Massimo Belardinelli
Article: Heroes Before 2000AD
Strontium Dog - No Cure for Kansyr (reprint from Starlord issue 6 and 7) (T. B. Grover (AKA John Wagner) & Carlos Ezquerra)
Judge Dredd _ Gate Crashers [Full Colour] (John Wagner - Ian Gibson)
Good Morning, Sheldon, I Love You! (reprint from Starlord issue 11) by John Wagner - Jose Casanovas
Illustrated text story 'Zragman' (Alan Grant - Eric Bradbury)
Tharg's Future Shocks - Fangs! (reprint from 2000ad prog 34) by Chris Lowder & Carlos Ezquerra
Photo-story: Tharg at the Printers
Article: 2000ad's Top 20 stories
Article: How the Dredd was Drawn - Ian Gibson Reveals All
Earn Big Money While You Sleep! (reprint from Starlord issue 16) by John Wagner - Jose Casanovas
Poem: Ode to a G.I. (Followed by Rogue Trooper) Steve MacManus (writing as 'Ian Rogan') with art by Robin Smith)
Article: Slaine - ask Ukko
Comic strip re-prints from the Daily Star:
Judge Dredd: Sweet Justice, Any Confessions, The Graduate, An Open and Closed Case, Driven to Crime, A Breach of the Law (John Wagner and Alan Grant - Ron Smith)
Feature: Top 2000ad Covers of '83
Mighty Tharg's Puzzle pages
ABC Warriors - Red Planet Blues [Full Colour] by Alan Moore - Steve Dillon and John Higgins.… (more)

Another fine annual from the freaks at Fleetway. The cover is by Dave Gibbons, and has Tharg in the centre panel, with Judge Dredd on his right side and Johnny Alpha on his left.

Following a double page spread of the Space Shuttle illustrating many key features of Earth's first reusable space craft, in orbit; We have a six page illustrated text story: Strontium Dog - Night of the Blood-Freaks!
Next, is a five pave article on special effects in sci-fi movies; touching on creature make-up and costumes, stop-motion animation, the matte process, miniatures and full-scale mock-ups, the shuftan process (a smoke and mirrors process which was largely superseded by Matte), and finally cartoon-live action. Although very brief in nature, this was a very informative article!
Following on is, The Mekon of Mekonta presents '10 Ways to Destroy the World'.
18 pages in, we come across our first comic 'Tharg's Future Shocks - The Mumps from Beyond the Moon' by Staccato (AKA Alan Grant), with art by Robin Smith and lettering by Jack Potter.
Following The Mighty Tharg's Cosmic Puzzle Pages, we are presented with something unexpected: Ro-Jaws and Hammer-Stein's Mini Annual (it's actually just fourteen full size pages) packed with articles aimed at 200ADs robot readership. Included within are comic pages from Ro-Busters by Chris Stevens, with art by Dave Hardwood and lettering by Peter Knight; and a Ro-Jaws' Robo-Tales text story 'Human on my Back'.
Finally we are left with The A.B.C. Warriors Data-File.

The rest of the annual is as follows:

Tharg's Future Shocks - The Man From 2000 (script: Oleh Stepaniuk - Art: David Hine - Lettering: Steve Potter)

2000AD Heroes Fact-File - Ursa and Zog

Black Hawk - Death-Dive (illustrated text story)

Guinea Pig [reprint from Eagle] (art: Brian Lewis)

2000AD Hall of Villains

Tharg's Future Shocks - Duel in the Dunes (Script: Oleh Stepaniuk - Art: Rob Moran - Lettering: Aldrich II)

The Being from Betelgeuse Six

ABC Warriors - Retreat from Volgow (illustrated text story)

Smokeman

Feature: Tharg's Guide to How 2000 A.D. is Produced

Bang! Bang! Said the Green Cheese Man!

2000AD Star Pin-Up - Starlord

Judge Dredd [Full colour] The Case of the Urban Gorillas (Script: Alan Grant - Art: Brett Ewins - Lettering: Tom Frame)

The annual ends with a reprint from Swift:
The Phantom Patrol (art: Gerry Embleton)… (more)